The Europe that Gay Porn Built, 1945-2000

战后欧洲日益增长的男同性恋色情杂志和色情杂志的跨国发行量如何促进了欧洲男同性恋之间共同身份和归属感的发展？这种形式的性爱公民身份如何呼应或复杂化了世界主义、人权、平等、社会正义和多元化的叙事，这些叙事与欧洲一体化和公民身份的平行项目有关？欧洲的存在对那些居住了几个世纪的人来说是显而易见的，但以积极的方式定义它是一个较新的现象。“欧洲”最初是以它不是什么而为人所知，最终被定义为它被认为是什么。对“欧洲”的积极重塑的核心是对共同的“欧洲”历史和政治认同的不断发展的信念，这些信念可以追溯到“希腊”的起源神话。作为对欧洲民族主义和两次世界大战遗留问题的回应，归因于欧洲人民的共性获得了政治势头。它们被欧洲一体化的理论家们影射并公开部署，他们想方设法想象一个欧洲公地。因此，今天的欧洲霸权植根于四个起源神话：罗马法的法律体系继承者，基于基督教和人文主义遗产的团结的社会风气，对个人权利和自由的承认，以及源于启蒙运动理性原则、普遍主义和世界主义的普遍主义。正是与战后“欧洲”的这些价值观和原则相关的，同性恋运动也开始定义自己。在二战及其余波引发的人口从农村到城市的跨国流动，以及日益增长的“生活方式”消费文化的推动下，男同性恋者最终开始认为自己是受压迫的少数群体的一部分，并聚集在一起，成为一个跨国的政治选民。最近的研究表明，围绕自由普遍主义的运动的核心是通过地方、国家和超国家层面的男同性恋者之间的媒体交流进行跨国协调。然而，这些研究让激进组织、他们与欧洲国家和超国家政治机构的关系以及他们的媒体网络获得了特权，尽管媒体学者令人信服地辩称，是色情和色情，而不是激进的媒体，成功地接触到了广泛地区的最大数量的男同性恋者，最终将他们联系在一起，并使他们能够想象他们所在的社区。为了解决这一学术鸿沟，《同性恋建立的欧洲，1945-2000》将首次绘制二战结束至21世纪初出版的同性恋色情和色情杂志的欧洲生产、流通和消费网络。并以此为基础，发展对男同性恋者想象中的“欧洲”的文化研究。我们将通过三个关键的创新方式来实现这一点：(1)探索由印刷同性恋色情文化调解的同性恋性想象将如何催化整个欧洲的同性恋男性想象彼此和他们的非欧洲其他人的新的、可能相互冲突的方式。(2)通过调查政治机构推动的泛欧洲同性恋性想象和欧洲主义想象之间的共鸣和不和谐。(3)通过关注“同欧洲主义”的情色来质问当我们谈论“欧洲”时我们谈论(或不谈论)什么。在民族主义和欧元怀疑主义在整个欧洲大陆积聚政治势头之际，该项目将提供一个新的重要视角来思考“欧洲”，因为它揭示了欧洲是如何被一个小型化的共同体想象和性爱地重复的，最终将被欧洲机构本身接纳为一种定义欧洲相对于其他欧洲的例外的方式。

How did the growing transnational circulation of gay male erotica and porn magazines in postwar Europe contribute to the development of a shared identity and sense of belonging among European gay men? How did this form of erotic citizenship echo or complicate narratives of cosmopolitanism, human rights, equality, social justice, and pluralism that were being associated with the parallel project of European integration and citizenship?While the existence of Europe has been evident to those who inhabit it for centuries, its definition by positive means is a more recent phenomenon. Originally known by what it was not, "Europe" eventually came to be defined by what it was thought to actually be. At the core of that positive refashioning of "Europe" was the developing belief in a common "European" history and political identity retroactively mapped back to the origin myth of "Greece." As a response to the legacies of European nationalisms and two world wars, the commonalities attributed to European peoples gained political momentum. They were alluded to and publicly deployed by the ideologues of European integration, who sought out means through which to imagine a European commons. Today's European hegemony is thus anchored in four myths of origin: a legal system heir to Roman law, a social ethos of solidarity grounded on Christian and humanist legacies, a recognition of individual rights and freedoms, and a universalism derived from Enlightenment principles of reason, universalism, and cosmopolitanism. It was in relation to those values and principles of postwar "Europe" that the gay movement would also come to define itself. Fuelled by rural-to-urban and transnational movements of people triggered by WWII and its aftermath, as well as by a growing "lifestyle" consumer culture, gay men eventually started to perceive themselves as members of an oppressed minority and come together as a transnational political constituency. As recent studies have shown, central to the coalescence of the movement around liberal universalism was its transnational coordination by means of media exchanges among gay men at local, national, and supranational levels. Those studies, however, have privileged activist organisations, their relationships with national and supranational European political institutions, and their media networks, despite the fact that media scholars have convincingly argued that it was erotica and porn, and not activist media, that managed to reach the largest numbers of gay men across extensive geographies, ultimately connecting them and allowing them to imagine a community of which they were part.To address that scholarly gap, "The Europe that Gay Porn Built, 1945-2000" will map for the first time the European networks of production, circulation and consumption of gay erotica and porn magazines published between the end of WWII and the turn of the 21st century, and build on them to develop a cultural study of "Europe" as imagined by gay men. We will do so in three key innovative ways: (1) by exploring how the gay sexual imaginary mediated by print gay porn cultures will have catalysed new and likely conflicting ways for gay men across Europe to imagine both one another and their non-European others. (2) by investigating the resonances and dissonances within and between that pan-European gay sexual imaginary and the Europeanist imaginary being advanced by political institutions. (3) by focusing on the erotics of "homoeuropeanism" to interrogate what we talk (or don't talk) about when we talk about "Europe." At a time when nationalisms and euro-scepticism is gaining political momentum across the continent, the project will offer a new important vantage point from where to think "Europe" through unveiling how the latter was imagined and erotically iterated by a minoritised community that would eventually be embraced by European institutions themselves as a way of defining the exceptionality of Europe against its others.